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The protesters on Wall Street came up with some new technology for communicating to a big crowd without a microphone: Their own set of hand signals. Here's a basic guide, as laid out in Occupy Wall Street's cleanly designed three-page trifold pamphlet on participating in their general assemblies.

This, though, is maybe more versatile. It should be said that hand signals have been part of the community organizer's meeting-management playbook for years, but the folks down in Zuccotti Park are improvising, too.

"If you cannot hear, point upwards," a writer on the protest general assembly's website wrote last week, in a summary of meeting minutes. "At last night’s meeting, they came up with a new hand signal for when a loud noise is coming up on the street, so the person speaking knows to pause until the noise has gone away."